The days of driving in endless loops, desperately seeking parking, may soon be over. New systems can sense which parking spaces are available, and send the information right to your smartphone.

Smartphones and navigation systems have taken a lot of the guesswork out of driving: They can help us pinpoint the nearest gas station, navigate to an obscure destination, and avoid heavy traffic and construction. Nabbing a parking spot on a crowded downtown street, on the other hand, has remained a matter of luck and the occasional fearless maneuver. But now, new intelligent parking systems are poised to make that easy, too.

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This year, several cities in Spain, including Barcelona, are pilot-testing a system developed by urban-solutions firm Urbiotica. Every parking space covered by Urbiotica's system contains a 1-1/2-by-5-inch battery-powered sensor embedded in the asphalt. Each sensor has an optical detector, which notices when the space above the sensor suddenly darkens, and a magnetic field detector, which confirms that the shadow has been produced by a metal vehicle rather than a passing cloud or pausing pedestrian.

If information from both detectors indicates that a car has pulled into the space, the device sends out a radio-frequency signal to a data collector. These transceivers—placed on common features in the urban environment, such as lampposts and building facades—receive signals from roughly a dozen spaces and send on the information to a central database. From there, information about open spots can be sent to parking administrators, electronic billboards or drivers' smartphones.

Similar programs have already been tested in the United States. This summer, Washington, D.C.'s District Department of Transportation (DDT) evaluated sensors made by StreetSmart Technology LLC in about 100 parking spaces over 10 blocks.

In Washington, D.C., 15 to 20 percent of congestion downtown is the result of "people circling the block looking for a parking space," says DDT acting associate director Soumya Dey. Besides frustrating people trying to park, the endless search significantly worsens traffic conditions for everyone; intelligent sensor systems that identify which spots are open can potentially make the road less congested for all drivers. The results of D.C.'s pilot program were so successful, Dey says, that the city now plans to use parking sensors citywide, installing them in the first 1000 spaces later this year.

San Francisco, which launched a much larger pilot program called SFpark last summer, cites the same motivations. "By reducing double-parking and circling, SFpark will reduce congestion and air pollution," San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesman Paul Rose says. For the two-year program, the city installed sensors in 5000 of the city's 25,000 metered parking spaces. Drivers can get real-time information about open spaces through online parking availability maps, from text messages and by calling an information hotline. The city is also making the data available to companies interested in making parking availability smartphone apps, Rose says.

Smart parking systems don't come cheap, however. The widely deployed SFpark has about $27 million of funding over two years, Rose says. Even a smaller system, such as Urbiotica's, costs between $200 and $400 per sensor to install, according to Urbiotica spokeswoman Irene Compte.

Improved ability to track parking use, however, provides cities with a way to earn back at least some of their investment. Simply showing drivers which spots are open isn't enough to keep congestion down, Dey says. If there are no open spots, drivers will still have to take lengthy detours to find parking. "You need to maintain an occupancy of 80 to 85 percent," he says, meaning 15 or 20 percent of spaces should be left open at any given time so that drivers looking for a spot will be able to find one. "The way you get to that number," he says, "is by controlling your pricing"—adjusting the cost of a given space up or down in response to demand.

SFpark prices, for example, can range from 25 cents to $6 per hour. Prices won't vary over the course of a day depending on the number of vacant spaces, Rose says: "You won't be in a parking spot and it goes up over the next five minutes because there's more of a demand." Instead, the city will use data from the sensors to price spaces based on overall demand in an area, with increases of no more than 25 cents every four weeks—with the caveat that fees may be higher during baseball games or other special events. Another price for easily sliding into a spot? Such systems will also be able to convey whether you've fed the meter or overstayed your welcome.